BSE

Blood courses cold through your veins while the air around you fills with electrical static, and you’re almost suffocating with the fear that has now captured your full attention.
Three fingers return to that place. They return over and over and a hundred times more. Two, three, four, five hundred times more, maybe. Arm up, arm [...]

My Huckleberry Friend

“We’re after the same rainbow’s end–
waiting ’round the bend,
my huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me.”
Happy Father’s Day.

Forty years

I can’t remember who, but someone had told me my father was dead.
My mother and brother and sister stood next to me while I bent down to kiss his embalmed cheek below eyes that no longer looked at me. His face felt cold and waxy, like lip balm. He didn’t tell me, “I love you.” [...]